


A Quiet Drink in a Quiet Bar

by isthisthedagger



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Crack, Humor, Other, Parody, Social Anxiety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28361505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isthisthedagger/pseuds/isthisthedagger
Summary: Post S2 finale!Din Djarin is tired. Tired of a constant barrage of allies offering to spend time with him. Tired of thinking about the son gained and lost.Din Djarin needs a quiet drink.This is not Din Djarin's day.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 37





	A Quiet Drink in a Quiet Bar

**Author's Note:**

> this is a one-shot short story set after the season 2 finale!
> 
> references for clone wars, original trilogy and prequel trilogy fans alike
> 
> this is an affectionate parody please don't be mad at me

Din Djarin just wanted a quiet drink in a quiet bar.

This desire, of course, was figurative. He was no stranger to shotgunning six glasses of Jawa Juice alone in the Razor Crest after a particularly traumatic bounty hunt, of course, but public establishments were a different question for one who wished to walk the true way of Mandalore. He would buy drinks, of course, but with his sacred vow to keep his helmet on in the sight of others, they pretty much just served as decorations, and/or potential weaponry for sudden bar brawls.

He would intoxicate himself later. For now, he merely wished to buy the most alcoholic glass of pond scum that a backwater watering hole could provide and stare at it for hours. No table guests, no conversations with the barkeep. Solitude amongst others. Just how he liked it.

Solitude had been so very easy for Din, once upon a time. He lived a life unconducive to personal attachment or social interaction. The concept of colleagues or work friends was an alien one to the bounty hunting profession, after all. If you met another guy in the workplace, you were meant to kill him. It was peaceful, insofar as the job could be peaceful. Perhaps Din couldn’t call himself happy, but who the hell could? The galaxy had only just begun to crawl out like a confused infant from under the thumb of the Empire. Those cheerful, incessant holo-ads from representatives of the nascent New Republic had insisted that hope had returned to the galaxy and its citizens could rejoice, but Din was a realist. Hope didn’t arrive just because a fancy politician in gilded robes said it did. Memories of planets razed and friends lost didn’t vanish because the source of them had been destroyed.

Then his life had become more… populated. It had started, of course, with the child – but that… didn’t need too much consideration. These past years had been about more than just the child.

Suddenly, he had found himself surrounded by allies. It was as if the universe had lost faith that he could get the job done alone. Cara Dune, Greef Karga, Kuiil, IG-88 – for some truly unknown reason, they had pledged themselves to him. It was helpful, he supposed. Moff Gideon and the amassed forces of the Imperial Remnant perhaps constituted more than a solo task. Din didn’t have a problem with accepting help, per se. It was often the most pragmatic path to take. It was the company he began to resent. All that chatter of glorious Rebellion battles, of drunken sabacc games. Din just wanted to curl up besides the – no, the child wasn’t relevant here, he was merely a side figure in the story – he just wanted to sleep. But it was awkward to leave a campfire mid-conversation. They’d give him funny looks and make comments like he’d done something wrong.

He had signed up for the bounty hunting/child saving aspect of the mission. As far as he was concerned, the social interaction afterwards was beyond his remit, and he strongly resented the unspoken agreement amongst his comrades that his lack of interest in any of that made him a killjoy.

At the very least, however, as least his erstwhile allies had been relatively undemanding. Dune and Karga dedicated themselves to the mission above all, and were pleasingly uninterested in waxing lyrical about their personal lives and interests outside of the immediate problem. It didn’t make him more any amenable to teamwork, but it didn’t make him any less, either. And being stuck in neutral was okay. He could live with that.

Recently, however, his luck on this front had taken a turn for the worse. The first sign of trouble, perhaps, was the arrival of Cobb Vanth, the gunslinging sheriff of Mos Pelgo who carried himself with the cocksure attitude of a hero of his own story. Vanth had struck him as a fancy, limitedly functional suit of armour and a winning smile in search of a personality. Okay, he helped out with the Krayt Dragon, and Din probably couldn’t have managed that alone, but there was still a swagger to the guy that felt like an imposition upon Din. He felt crowded out just being in the presence of the man, a perplexing feeling he had resolved to run away from as fast as he could. A time-tested method, of course.

Vanth had been a herald, and hordes of other colourful characters soon followed the sound, each seemingly more outsize in their personality and convinced of their own grandeur than the next. Bo-Katan and her weird Mandalorian friends with their relaxed attitude towards helmet-wearing. She had been broadly helpful, but the constant muttering about the need to reclaim her hereditary weapon and bring glory to the seat of Mandalore once more, even when Din had clearly not indicated an openness to conversation, had grated. Ahsoka Tano, who… actually, she was pretty okay, to be honest. Comfortable with lengthy periods of solitude, reserving her chatter only for work-related matters, and a hell of a fighter with those dual light-stick thingies. She’d given him Beskie, the spear which Din had named after a night on the juice. (He had been unable to expel the name from his mind, no matter how hard he tried.) As helpful as she was, Tano was still another in a long list of people he had been forced to work with when he had expected a perfectly pleasant solo mission. She’d gotten him mixed up in some territorial dispute, and Din never understood any of those. He had lived a life pleasantly free of territorial disputes, before. Oh, to return to before.

Nothing compared, however, to the mighty pomp and circumstance of Boba Fett. Oh, Din didn’t believe that “simple man making his way through the galaxy” spiel for a second. He had tagged Fett the moment the growling quasi-Mandalorian had made his entrance on Tython: Fett was a man who lived his life as a series of dramatic interludes. Din had seen him in the subsequent battle with the Stormtroopers. He fought impractically in a manner far more oriented towards aesthetics than combat functionality. He left the field for several minutes to make a costume change. Multiple times – Din was certain of this – Fett had stopped to strike poses. As far as he was aware, Fett was not the star of his own holo-entertainment (frankly, if they were to make a film or a book of Boba Fett, Din wouldn’t bother watching), but he certainly behaved as if he was.

And then they’d all come together. Yeesh. Yes, it was for a good cause – though it was done now, no need to worry about that – but it had still perturbed him plenty. Looking around the deck of the Slave I, Din saw not a comfortable gathering of a couple of tactically useful work colleagues, but instead an entire squadron of allies, some of whom he seriously worried believed themselves to be his friend. It was enough to make a man reconsider his life.

Din was tired. Tired of constantly bumping into people with an inflated sense of self-importance and a perplexingly detailed back-story. Tired of being forced to care about their personal agendas and emotional needs. Tired, most of all, of having to do stuff with people all the time. Doing stuff with people was exhausting. It was not the way that all stuff was meant to be done.

So, here he had come. He had hired a standard ship-for-rent, searched for the most obscure planet in its registry, and had set a course. His choice had taken him to the planet of Gorrgovv – a place he had never heard of before, which suited him just fine. He had skimmed the planet’s surface, identifying the ramshackle collection of hovels that passed for a most populated settlement, and flying well on past into its curdled brown wilderness. The last part he had done on foot, beskar spear at the ready for any hostile intruders or local fauna. The kind of place he was looking for couldn’t be found by air.

It had taken some time, but finally, he had stumbled exhausted into a stubby little valley deep within the middle of nowhere, where a single shack stood slightly askew, as if it was a little confused too as to why it was there. There was no guarantee that it was a bar, but nobody put this little effort into a place where visitors were expected to be sober the entire time. Sure enough, as Din scraped aside the crumbling wooden door, a collection of stumpy shapes he assumed to be chairs surrounded a bar area at which a clump of barrels full of unidentifiable slurry stood.

This would do just fine.

There were only five or six other patrons in the bar, and their hostility to this intruder appeared to be so intense that it bypassed the ordinary ominous-staring stage, and instead manifested in an absolute disinterest. It was so very pleasant to enter a place without ominous stares. Din had been ominously stared at more times than he could count, and it was always one of the most difficult stages of the bounty-hunting process. It sounded a little ridiculous, but he really didn’t enjoy being stared at. Even with his helmet on for protection. It was impossible to avoid the sense that could have been making eye contact with him, and that was far more discomfort than he was equipped to handle.

Din collapsed into one of the stump-chairs by the bars and tapped quietly yet insistently on its rough surface to garner the attention of the barman. Soon enough, a male Togruta with a deep-set scowl on his face emerged, and grunted at Din, his lekku curling in apparent disdain for the Mandalorian. He took this as invitation to order and pointed to one of the slurry-barrels. Given that he wouldn’t be drinking, and that his helmet was pretty firmly sealed from odours, Din didn’t much mind what he picked.

He let out a quiet sigh as the barman busied himself with pouring the drink, scowl-grunting all the while. Peace at last. Solitude at last. It was a cool balm. He didn’t even realise how much he needed it until this moment, and he had needed it a lot beforehand.

Din exhaled, and then instantly heard the thump of a new patron’s arrival beside him. Could have been anyone. Nevertheless, the hairs on his arms pricked. He found himself listening more intently, scoping out the corners of his helmet’s display for potential threats. Without any way of truly knowing, he found himself certain that this was someone important.

Oh no. This was someone important.

“We meet again, Mandalorian,” intoned his companion, in a voice he hadn’t had nearly enough time to forget. 

Practically forcing his body to turn, Din swivelled in his chair to come face-to-face/helmet with Bo-Katan Kryze, his fellow Mandalorian and comrade-in-arms on two occasions.

Thinking about it now, it was really weird she called him Mandalorian. He had a name.

Din fought to stifle the sigh that instantly fought to escape him at the sight of Bo-Katan. Her presence here could only mean one thing: more Darksaber drama. Joy.

He really didn’t understand the fuss about the black glowstick he had swiped from Moff Gideon. It seemed a less efficient weapon than the beskar spear and very dangerous to keep around, and yet Bo-Katan treated it with the reverence of a holy object. And then there was the rule she had about claiming it. Little to really understand there.

“Djarin, I must take possession of the Darksaber. It is necessary for my lifelong quest to bring glory to my clan and amass a force to retake the seat of Mandalore.” Bo-Katan’s voice went deeper when she was speaking portentously like this. It was abundantly clear that this wasn’t her real voice, but Din felt too awkward to probe.

Okay. Fine. His suggestion that he just hand it over had been shot down. No problem. There were reasonable alternatives here.

“Could I drop it and then you pick it up?”, he asked.

“Impossible. Such an action would bring disgrace to Clan Kryze,” responded Bo-Katan.

“What if I dropped it and then someone else picked it up and then handed it to you?”

“My ancestors would know of my deception.”

“Fine. If we have to fight for claim of the saber, why not perform a mock fight that you will win?”

“This would besmirch the honour of ritual combat.”

What did besmirch mean? “Could you wound me just a little bit and then I can yield?”

“By saying that, you have negated the honour of the fight.”

“Could you wound me a lot and then I can yield? I’d really like to get rid of this thing.”

“The same applies. The holder of the Darksaber must be slain.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m out of ideas now.”

“Very well. The matter of the Darksaber will be settled another day. The restoration of the glory of Mandalore must wait.”

“But I’m completely fine with just handing it – “

“Farewell, Mandalorian. Pray we do not meet again in more hostile circumstances.”

Dramatically whirling around, Bo-Katan stomped towards the exit.

Okay. A little weird. But at least that was unfinished business, and that was the last of it that Din could recall. No reason to expect any further interruptions.

Din savoured the silence.

“Mando!”

Are you – No. Best to remain polite for now. No telling what might result from a slip of social etiquette in a place like this.

Another former ally. This he could deal with.

The problem here was that he didn’t recognise the guy. 

Really. He could literally have been anyone. Slightly messy brown hair, a half-hearted attempt at facial hair, a forced devil-may-care smirk. Ever since Han Solo had been catapulted to Rebellion fame after the Battle of Yavin, these wannabes had been incessant thorns in Din’s side. Solo had a lot to answer for.

Din tilted his helmet to signify confusion, and the man’s smirk began to wane just a little.

“You don’t remember me?”

No. “I… don’t recall at this time.”

The man genuinely seemed very put out by this. Clearly his projection of ego was a weak one. “My name is Toro Calican.”

“Okay,” said Din.

“Toro Calican? We sailed the dunes of Tatooine together.”

“It’s not ringing a bell.”

“We took on Fennec Shand together.”

This was the worst thing about Din’s newly ally-filled life: the amount of people that he was forced to remember. Face blindness came really easily when you lived your own life never showing yours.

“You killed me?”

Oh! Now he remembered. That little womp-rat. “Oh. Calican! Aren’t you dead?”

Calican shrugged. “It’s pretty hard to die in this galaxy.”

That, Din knew well. Shand had returned with a cyborg torso from certain death, and Fett had spent almost all of his time with Din waxing about the horrors of the sarlacc pit and its corrosive acids. Bouncebackability. If anything else, it lessened the fear of death.

“Why are you here, then?”

Calican spread his arms out wide, in what was so very obviously a pre-prepared gesture. “Adventure, Mandalorian! The bounty of a lifetime”

Absolutely not. Din had had enough bounties of a lifetime for… well, for more than one lifetime. He didn’t yet know how long his sabbatical was going to be, but he anticipated a lengthy one.

“Sorry. Not interested.”

That pathetic little sad-puppy face again. “You’d turn this down?”

“I would, yes.”

Calican’s mouth now turned to a sneer. “The famous Din Djarin, turning down a bounty. I never thought I’d see the day.”

Alright. Din had had enough of this idiot. “You don’t even know me.”

That seemed to be enough to defuse Calican’s interest for now. His faux-Solo impression was back in force. “Suit yourself, Mando. I’ll find someone willing.”

“Okay,” said Din.

Imagine his luck, stumbling into two irritating allies in the same backwater bar. How had they found him here in this nondescript backwater? Was he being tracked? Din suddenly felt the rush of incipient paranoia. Maybe he really was being tracked. It wasn’t safe out here.

Secondarily, his party spirit had flamed out now. He wanted a nap.

He pushed off from his stool, and made to head towards the exit – but from out of nowhere, six burly men in unusually coloured helmets and armour blocked his way.

“Steady on, soldier,” intoned one.

“Halt!” commanded another, whose helmet was emblazoned with a fading painting of teeth that Din assumed were intended to be very scary.

Din’s first reaction to them was irritation, but soon followed curiosity. It was their voices that piqued his attention. He’d heard that burr before. Recently, actually. He had heard it tell so very many stories about the horrors of the Tatooine dunes.

Fett. No, wait. That guy would never leave the armour that he spent all his nights polishing. 

Clones.

Huh. Din had assumed that accelerating ageing would have done them in by now, or at least rendered them decrepit. These soldiers seemed healthy enough.

The first clone to address him lifted his helmet, and – oh.

Yeah, no, he really wasn’t in a good way. His face was astonishingly detailed map of wrinkles, his skin shrivelled to the consistency of a space prune. His head just seemed really, really small. When he spoke once more, his voice was a barely audible croak.

“Mandalorian, we have travelled far to seek your assistance,” The speaker paused to catch his breath. “My name is Captain Rex. I’m… here now, for some reason.” Another lengthy, awkward pause. Din started to wonder if he ought to fill the silence with something. “We… we seek an ancient enemy which had plagued our galaxy for years.”

Oh, shit. Perhaps this was something important. A worthy cause Din could rally behind. Who could it be? Another Imperial Moff with the resources of remnant factions? A renegade Sith? Stars forbid, even the return of Emperor Palpatine himself?!

He urged himself to stay calm. “Who is it you seek?”

Rex’s skin had turned entirely white, which seemed concerning. “The… the mighty… ZILLO BEAST.” He collapsed to the floor.

“Should we help him?!” Din asked, in a tone of genuine panic.

“He is dead,” another of the clones solemnly proclaimed. “Death would come for us all, eventually.” This clone then proceeded to collapse, much like Rex. On his way down, he tumbled into the next one along, and then the next, and then the next, and then they were all upon the floor, unmoving.

It had seemed like a bad idea for them all to line up quite as neatly as that if they had trouble standing.

Too stunned to process what he had just witnessed, Din continued to stumble towards the exit. He really needed to get out of here. There was something inescapably dark in this place.

He walked straight into another body. Of course, he did.

Looking up, Din found himself facing a tall, bald Black man clad in tattered robes. Seconds later, his brain caught up in a mighty chime of recognition.

He remembered this man. It had been hard to forget the news bulletins on the holos in the Mandalorian foundry, blaring dispatches from a world falling apart. He had only been a young child, less than a year fresh from the loss of his parents, but it had been impossible to forget. The fall of this man – recognisable from the purple glowstick, which Din was pretty sure nobody else had had been the first sign that something had irrevocably shifted in the galaxy.

Most importantly, he was definitely also dead.

“Mace Windu?”

Windu nodded solemnly. “It is I.”

Din found that he could only stammer in the face of this legendary man. “B-but you’re dead!”

“I am not.”

“But you were thrown from one of the highest windows of the Imperial Senate building!”

“I landed softly.”

This was getting to be somewhat exhausting.

Windu stiffened his back. “I am one of those rare Jedi left in this twilight galaxy.”

Din shook his head. “Rare?”

Solemn stare. “There are so few of us left now.”

“No, I’ve bumped into two.”

“Bumped into - ?”

“Yeah. I just sort of fell into their path.”

Windu’s mouth had formed a perfect O. It seemed incumbent on Din to progress the conversation.

“W-why are you here now?”

“To offer you a quest, Mandalorian. To restore balance in the universe. A spark of light to the darkest places. This, my friend, is your destiny.”

Nooooooooope. The moment that Din heard the word destiny was his cue to leave.

“I’m busy today, sorry.” With that, he pushed past a surprised Windu before the Jedi could stop him.

Just ten steps to the exit, and then he’d be home. Back in a place of peace, away from all these people and their agendas and their destinies and – he caught something in the corner of his eye that struck icy daggers of fear into his heart.

Slumped over the bar, swamped in black robes, was none other than the dread Emperor Palpatine himself. 

How could the Emperor have returned? Was the galaxy truly safe now? Did anybody else – even notice this?!

Din’s jolt of fear must have been noticeable even encased within his beskar, for the Togruta barman creased with laughter upon seeing him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

His heart thudded faster than he had ever heard it before. “Is that – Emperor Palpatine?”

“Yeah. He’s just sort of here now.” responded the barman immediately. “But don’t worry about it. He says that he’s on a cooldown period between attempts to wrest tyrannical rule of the galaxy. Apparently, he only has the energy to do them every twenty to thirty years. He gets tired after them. You’re all good for, like, another twenty years. He’s up to some cloning stuff that seems really complicated and has lots of steps, and I don’t really understand it, but it’ll take a while.”

Din didn’t even pretend to understand any of that. He merely chose to wipe the encounter from his mind like a save from a data backup. Like everything this evening, really. Forgettability was the only upside.

He reached the door, and with a gigantic exhale, he threw it open. 

Greeting him around the bar’s entrance were Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa, Chewbacca, a man he didn’t recognise in white robes, and Darth Vader?!

“Hello,” said the man in white. “My name is Obi-Wan, and this is my former apprentice, Anakin,” gesturing to Vader. “We’re just sort of here now.” With a glint in his eye, he extended his hand to Din. “I’d like to invite you on a quest – “

Din broke into a sprint away from the congregation.

He had tried to escape everything tonight. Cut loose from it all. Sever ties to the past. And the past had curled back around and entangled him within its grasp. What could a man do against such an inexorable force? What could anyone do?

The ship would bring solace. A place for him, and him alone, to just be.

As he neared his berth, he noticed a figure nestled within its shadow. Coming closer, he beheld a truly misshapen thing – a face half pristine and half corroded, mismatched limbs, a third eye within its belly, and legs which seemed to turn to liquid at their base.

Din did not have time for this.

“Hale tidings, Mandalorian!” hollered the figure. “I am the man known as Glup Shitto.”

Fantastic. What quest could this person offer him? A battle for the soul of the universe, perhaps?

Shitto turned bashful, the melted half of their face drooping further. “I was wondering if I could use the bathroom on your ship.”

Din considered this for a second and made his decision.

“No.”

They’d ask for the bathroom and then it’d be a whole conversation and then a quest offer and then he’d be stuck with a new friend for days. Enough.

Din Djarin had had more than enough social interaction today.


End file.
